The current SmartXX was actually planned to be OZXCHIP II. Unfortunately there were differences between the developers and team OZX during the early development phase of the chip. So the Group (OZX) and the developers split up and the developers decided to keep on looking for a better partner or do their Marketing by themselves. But developers are, of course, no marketing specialists, so they needed a new partner which, as you can see, was found.

But they overlooked one thing: OZX still had access to some (luckily) very old (and very buggy) Sources and Development documents.

The developers themselves continuously worked on the modchip and advanced its features a lot more, while OZX probably thought they could use the old files and work on a new project themselves. As you can see, the solution for OZX was the joint-venture between OZX and xodus and they used these old pieces of info from the old project to create a new project: The Xenium.

Result: There are 2 new Modchips now, which were both build upon the same basis, which are in fact from the developers of the BioXX/NitroXX. For the Xenium one can only hope that they could find adept coders and developers who could develop the old and buggy software further. But judging from the Screenshots, they couldnít. These Shots almost 1 to 1 (except for the background) depict the development status of October 2003.

Now back to the SmartXX: This thing will seriously kick butt, I am already really anxious about it!

Here is another statement on the delay of the SmartXX:

The major reason for the delay is to be read above ^^ 1. They had to find a new partner 2. After they found out that OZX was illegally using parts of the development, the Team behind the SmartXX had to change the whole Hardware and Software encryption to protect it from being used on the Xenium. 3. The Market for Flash-romís is absolutely dead right now, the prices are 5-6x higher than they were at October 2003 and 4mb or 8mb Flashes are practically impossible to get right now, or it takes up to 8 weeks or longer for them to arrive.

that screen looks like the XenuimOS from www.ozxodus.comand the hardware design

All of the chip "OS's" are going to built to be built off of cromwell, with similiar features. I'm sure that each chip maker will have one or 2 features that others don't, but for the most part, you can start thinking of this as a standard.

As for this mod, it looks great, I just hope that some of the 'over the top' features such as the lcd screen (optional?) and 4meg flash rom (while inexpensive for the manufacturer, can lead to hefty price increases) doesn't put this chip out of reach for those of us on a budget.

I wouldn't have said that the 4meg flash was insignificantly priced for the manufacturer either.

I'd be fairly sure that there will be multiple configurations. And my guess is that the box depicted here will be one example of a fully modded xbox available for sale.This box will almost certainly be designed to showcase the features of the chip.

As for the design, well, it looks like a fairly normal set top box.. Hardly unsurprising, given the way the home entertainment market has been moving towards stealthing and such.

In all fairness though, the developers at Xodus have proven themselves more than capable of quality chip design in the past, and I think the speed that the Xenium was developed and released is proof of that.

Having said that, all of this new information is very enlightening, and definitely makes the SmartXX more attractive to me then when it was initially announced.

I'm interested to see how this develops. It looks like we are going to have 3 new and exciting chips in the coming months. Hopefully this new level of competition brings with it some amazing new devlopments as all 3 teams try to one up the others.